Cure
by Osidiano
Summary: Drabble written for September 6th, 2010; prompt was "the cold only kills." A young, grieving Squall finds comfort in his new GF. Told from Shiva's perspective.


**Disclaimer/Notes:** I do not own Final Fantasy VIII, or any of the characters mentioned here. They belong to Square Enix, and no money is being made off of this piece of fiction. This story was written solely for entertainment purposes, and no copyright infringement was intended. Please, do not sue. All original ideas are original (duh) and belong to me, unless otherwise mentioned. This story is **unbeta'd**, but otherwise needs no warnings. Enjoy.

**Cure**

The little boy was huddled under the desk, his knees curled up against his chest and his small arms wrapped around his shins. His chin was scraped and bleeding, smearing red on his leg where he rubbed his face on the coarse fabric of his shorts. He had been crying, but that in itself was neither a surprising nor uncommon reaction given his temperament. She brushed her cold fingers through his mind, turning over one hazy memory after another. It seemed like he was always crying.

He hiccuped loudly in the otherwise silent room, the sound like a shredding of his already hoarse voice. She frowned, uncertain. It was not often that she spent her time around children, and he was new to her. In a way, he was a novelty, though every action and tear shed was the same as the one before it. She wondered if he recognized his own inability to change and adapt, but guessed that the monster inside him kept such notions from his consciousness. Sometimes, though, he would try something new, and it would hurt him far worse than those many vague memories of pain.

She watched him carefully from inside, peering around the dark shadows of his subconscious mind where she often rested. Something had happened, some new interaction with a child that he might have, at some point, known or remembered. But now he was hurting, and it felt like fire coursing through his body, searing his insides and making his veins throb. She felt it, too, but knew that the tremors that would lead to the seizure were a result of anxiety and fear, not thermodynamics or neurological dysfunction. Watching him collapse in on himself was odd, because he was too human for his age, she thought. He should not have had these visions and horrific perceptions invading his sense of reality.

He kept crying, but she knew that he could not feel it, because he was rubbing at the steam that poured from his eyes when he tried to sob. It was demonic and monstrous, the way that she knew he felt about his illness. He was trying for normalcy and failing miserably, and the knowledge of his inadequacy showed itself to him as red streaks burned down his cheeks and dripping blood off his jawline. He closed his smoldering eyes, and gripped the hem of his ugly yellow t-shirt tighter. His throat closed around a strange, choked noise. It grated like nails along his windpipe.

She wondered why she had been given to a child who was so obviously broken. There was no reason for such a thing to be kept at all.

He begged the lion to take away the memory of the interaction, but the monster only rumbled and looked the other way, bored, tired. It had been present when she had been introduced to him; apparently, it had always been there. It hungered and raged and slept inside him, but never seemed to do as it was told. She thought that was odd, too. What was the purpose of all that power if it could not be called upon? But the lion was not the same as she was. She was all cold mentality and calculating force. It was a black hole of sanity, a warm, pulsating dementia. But it took up space in the mind the same way that she did, devoured memories and lived off psychic energy just as she did. She, however, could be manifested, meanwhile it was stuck so far back – curled up in the primitive processes of the boy's brain – that forcing it out might have killed him.

"_Please. . ._" the little boy did not know her name because receiving her had been just one more memory to feed to the monster he housed. It did not matter; she did not know his name, either. He reached out to her blindly, and she took his hand. His skin went numb but at least it didn't hurt anymore. The tiles beneath him went cold, tiny icicles forming on the underside of the desk as she pulled herself free of the poisoned confines of his mind. She caressed the side of his face, noting the way that he leaned into it even as blisters formed on the skin where she had touched. He shivered, the color fading from his face and lips shadowing blue. The blood on his chin froze, and he squeezed his eyes shut, whimpering. She could feel his desperation, his thoughts clawing at her as he sought out any small semblance of kindness in her actions. She kissed his forehead, and killed the pain away.


End file.
